Eta still main suspect despite denials

The armed Basque separatist group Eta last night denied responsibility for the multiple explosions that tore through packed commuter trains in Madrid on Thursday morning killing almost 200 people - as the Spanish government continued to insist it was the prime suspect.

Eta "has no responsibility whatsoever for the Madrid attacks", a caller claiming to be from the group told the Basque-language newspaper Gara, in which the group often issues its statements. A second similar call reportedly went to a Basque television station.

The denials came shortly after the interior minister, Angel Acebes, said the terrorist group remained the main focus of an intense police operation, though an al-Qaida link has also not been ruled out.

"It is still the main line of investigation," Mr Acebes told a news conference. "There is no reason for it not to be."

The phone calls from Eta came amid a desperate search for clues as police and forensic teams swept through the bomb sites looking for anything they might have missed.

Last night millions of people took to the streets of Spanish cities to protest against the attacks, some chanting "cowards" and "killers" as they thronged cities from Madrid to the Canaries, Barcelona to Bilbao. One estimate put the total number of demonstrators at 11 million - more than a quarter of the population. The crowds in Madrid were joined by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and the president of the European commission, Romano Prodi.

Hundreds of mourners gathered outside the Spanish embassy in London, while hundreds more attended a memorial mass at Westminster Cathedral. The EU called for three minutes silence on Monday across the 15-nation union in memory of the slain.

The death toll continued to rise during the day as some of the injured died. The 199th victim was a seven-month-old girl, Patricia. The total number of injured was finally put at more than 1,400, dozens of them fighting for their lives. A further rise in the death toll remained likely, officials said.

Fourteen foreigners, mostly immigrant workers, were revealed to be among the dead, coming from Peru, Honduras, Poland, France, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Colombia, Morocco and Guinea-Bissau. A British man and woman, were recovering in hospital. Their injuries were not serious. Three Americans were also among those injured.

Official information on the investigation remained sparse, and there were reports from the Spanish media about an unexploded bomb being found in a rucksack abandoned at one of the blast sites.

Madrid nervously and gingerly got back to business yesterday, but the police evacuated the Atocha train station again in response to a false alarm.

It was unclear how the attacks, which saw 10 bombs explode on four trains over 15 minutes, would affect the general elections tomorrow.

If Eta is deemed responsible, that might boost support for the rightwing People's party and its successor to prime minister José María Aznar, Mariano Rajoy. Both support a "no negotiating" stance on Eta, and the group has seen its operational capacity seriously reduced by police action during Mr Aznar's eight years as prime minister.

If the bombing is seen as the work of al-Qaida, voters may recall Mr Aznar's unpopular decision to back the US-led invasion of Iraq, and to deploy Spanish troops after the invasion. Mr Aznar, at one of his last press conferences as Spain's prime minister, vowed to track down those responsible, but he refused to speculate about whether his support for the Iraq war could be a reason why Spain might have been targeted by al-Qaida.

"We will bring the guilty to justice," he said. "No line of investigation is going to be ruled out."